To the CEO and Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences:

Janet Yang, President
Howard Rodman, Vice President/Secretary
Donna Gigliotti, Vice President/Treasurer
Lynette Howell Taylor, Vice President
Lesley Barber, Vice President
Devon Franklin, Vice President
Bill Kramer, CEO
Marlee Matlin
Lou Diamond Phillps
Rita Wilson
Jinko Gotoh
Marlon West
Richard Hicks
Kim Taylor-Coleman
Debra Zane
Dion Beebe
Paul Cameron
Ellen Kuras
Ruth E. Carter
Eduardo Castro
Daniel Orlandi
Patricia Cardoso
Ava DuVernay
Jason Reitman
Chris Hegedus
Simon Kilmurry
Jean Tsien
Pam Abdy
Hannah Minghella
Nancy Richardson
Stephen Rivkin
Terilyn A. Shropshire
Howard Berger
Lois Burwell
Linda Flowers
Megan Colligan
David Dinerstein
Laura C. Kim
Lesley Barber
Charles Fox
Richard Gibbs
Jason Blum
Jennifer Fox
Wendy Aylsworth
K.K. Barrett
Kalina Ivanov
Missy Parker
Chris Tashima
Peter Devlin
Andy Nelson
Mark P. Stoeckinger
Rob Bredow
Brooke Breton
Paul Debevec
Eric Roth
Dana Stevens
Rodrigo García

The Members of the Board of Missing Movies and the others here undersigned are writing to protest the October 31, 2024 firing of 16 employees of the Academy Film Archive and Library, including longtime curators and senior staff. During a Zoom conference call these employees were informed that they had been summarily fired, effective immediately. Shortly thereafter the staff members learned that their Academy email addresses had been deleted. These include Mike Pogorzelski — director of the Academy Film Archive for the last 24 years — and longtime Archive staff members Sean Savage, Lynne Kirste, Joe Lindner, Melissa Levesque, Mike Brostoff, and Ed Carter. 

The peremptory and disrespectful manner in which these experienced and dedicated professionals were let go reflects a deep disregard for the vital work of the Academy Film Archive. These senior staff members have deep institutional knowledge of the Archive’s history and goals; they built the organizational structures, collections, and community outreach that allowed it to grow and thrive. We are deeply concerned that  these firings represent a deviation from the Academy’s stated mission “to recognize and uphold excellence in the motion picture arts and sciences, inspire imagination, and connect the world through the medium of motion pictures.” 

Crucially, the Academy is responsible for maintaining the legacy of its members’ professional achievements. The continued preservation of precious moving image materials must be at the center of that mandate. When a film is preserved, future generations are able to appreciate, study, and become inspired by the work of cinematographers, animators, directors, set designers, actors, musicians, composers, stunt people, makeup artists, editors, dancers, choreographers; in sum, all the creative people who contribute to that movie’s artistry. When a film is lost or deteriorates due to neglect, those creators are erased from our history. This is doubly true for marginalized filmmakers.

With the rise of streaming and online access, some people may have come to believe that digitizing a film is the same as preserving it. But this is absolutely false. As film restorationists and archivists know, as technology advances, the ongoing need for access to original film and audio elements grows ever more important. 

In recent decades, Mike Pogorzelski and the Academy Film Archive have done valuable work collecting and preserving films by creators from diverse communities in the US and internationally. These efforts are vital to ensuring that the Academy fulfills its goal to become more inclusive in its focus.

We request that the CEO and Governors of the Academy rehire these archivists who have done so much to establish the Academy Film Archive as one of the world’s premiere repositories of motion picture history.